AFRICAN RACE CAMPAIGN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26967, 17 February 1953, Page 9

AFRICAN RACE CAMPAIGN

National Strike Planned (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, Feb. 15. Delegates representing 400,000 European, Indian and native workers, with members of the Transvaal, Indian and Africasr National Congresses, today decided to call a national strike throughout South Africa early in April. The executives of the congresses were asked to intensify the defiance of the lace laws campaign and to declare the strike. The meeting, which packed the Johannesburg Trades Hall, was called in protest against the Government’s new Public Safety Bill and the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. Similar meetings were held in several South African cities. Nearly 1000 coloured people, some of them women with babies, marched and sang through Cape Town’s main streets after a three hours’ open-air mass meeting protesting against the new measures. A full Durban meeting carried resolutions demanding the withdrawal of the bills. Those voting, held they were not only directed against nonwhite South Africans, but also equally endangered the rights of White South Africans.